all nature rears its head with a loose rein, as if defying method, law,
order and construction! Why, merely to walk through some of the tropical
houses at Kew gives one a sort of lawless feeling! If I stay long among
the queer gnarled plants--all spiky and speckled and hairy; squatting,
plump and ungainly on the ground, or spreading huge knotted arms far
overhead, as if reaching out for things they never visibly attain--I
always emerge into the ordinary English atmosphere outside, feeling
altogether unconventional. As I walk across the well-kept lawns, I find
it almost difficult to behave with decorum. It takes me quite a long
time to become really common-place and conventional once more."

Helen smiled. "Darling," she said, "I think you must have visited the
tropical plants in Kew Gardens more frequently than I realised! I shall
have to forbid Kew, when certain important County functions are
pending."

"Oh, bother the County!" cried Ronnie. "I never went in for a French
dancing-master to bid me mind my P's and Q's! But, seriously, Helen,
don't you understand how much this means to me? Both my last novels have
had tame English settings. I can't go on forever letting my people make
love in well-kept gardens!"

"Dear Ronnie, you have a good precedent. The first couple on record made
love in a garden."

"Nonsense, darling! Eden was a quite fascinating jungle, in which all
the wild animals conversed with intelligence and affability. You don't
suppose Eve would have stood there alone, calmly listening while the
serpent talked theology, unless conversations with animals had been an
every-day occurrence. Think how you'd flee to me, if an old cow in the